Tag: decisions

Having been working for myself for 18 months I still haven’t achieved anywhere near as much as I had hoped. Now don’t get me wrong I have done a few things in that time that I am very pleased with. The problem is that I just haven’t found nearly as much time as I had wanted to, to spend on the personal projects I had envisaged.

Over that time I have had some good months and some not so good months…

Then I was offered some extra work for my old company but this came with some extra restrictions. This got me thinking as to whether I would just be better off returning to full time employment. Am I really cut out to be my own boss?

Time to reflect on my original decision and see if my feelings have changed in any way…

I was recently asked what I thought about bridge cameras. To be honest I hadn’t really heard much about them before but when shown what they could do I was amazed.

A few days later I was packing my camera backpack for a day out down to Snowdrop Valley. Having not been there before I wasn’t sure about which lenses I might need so I took all three of the lenses I currently own, a wide-angle zoom, a prime lens and a telephoto zoom. (You can see more details of the lenses I use on the new Gadgets page I have set up listing all my gear)

I did in fact use all three lenses but they make the bag quite heavy and the constant switching of lenses is really starting to bug me. Sometimes I end up taking all three lenses and only using one of them…

As they were fresh in my mind this got me thinking about bridge cameras. Should I replace my dated DSLR with a bridge camera?

Every program or app has some kind of version number. With Mac OS X, the X is a Roman numeral for version 10. OS X Lion relates to version 10.7 and the latest release, at the time of writing, is 10.7.1.

OK so what exactly do all these numbers mean and what is the best way to use these numbers when creating your own applications?

I am kicking off a new ‘Programming’ category today. As this is a big part of what I do for a living I thought I should use this opportunity to impart some my knowledge and/or views. To start here is an explanation of how I view version numbers and my recommendation of how to decide which numbers to use.

This whole working for yourself thing is a huge learning curve. I really pushed myself with lots of late nights to reach my recent deadlines. One night I was up till 5:30 in the morning getting ready to deliver a new program to someone the following morning.

So two out of the three projects were delivered pretty much on time. I released the Ski Pad iPhone app last week and it seems to have gone down well. The second project I was working on was a desktop program, developed in Delphi, to track jobs and print tickets for a skip hire company.

The other project… Well every time this project gets discussed there seems to be more issues that add to the workload…

I have overextended myself a bit in recent weeks. I had three big projects that are all due to come to a head at pretty much the same time.

My mistake was that for two of these projects I left the target date pretty much open. This seemed like a good idea at the time because then I could work on them as and when I had the chance. As with all things that aren’t extremely urgent I didn’t find as much time as I would have liked.

Time passed and as there was no deadline I had no urgency. This is not a good situation to be in.

I should have known better than this as I have experienced it over and over again when working for other people. Jobs are not important until someone starts to push for them. Then you start getting questioned about what you have been doing and why it isn’t ready yet…

Once you get to this stage then all of a sudden the job becomes very urgent if you want to keep the customer happy.

One of the things that I always aim to do is to be honest in my writings. I try not to exaggerate things to make myself sound better than I actually am and I make sure to portray my failings as well as my successes.

I think honesty is an important part of happiness. The more white lies that you have to employ to get you through the day, the more stress incurred, with the extra complication of trying to remember who you told what!

‘You can never get caught in a lie you never told.’

Now I am not suggesting that everyone should become saints overnight and never lie again. I just think that in general being up front about things as early as possible can make things easier for both sides.

As one year ends another begins. What better time to look back on the year that has just finished and look forward to the year that has just started?

The monthly reviews I do have been very helpful but as they only cover a period of a month there are some goals that are just not appropriate. So I decided that I would take some time to review how I got on in 2010 and set out some targets for 2011.

First things first though:

Happy New Year.
I hope 2011 brings you good health and an abundance of happiness.

Another Friday has arrived and I don’t have anything ready to post. There are a few drafts I have started but there are not ready for posting yet for one reason or another. This is starting to become a bit of a habit and some of my recent posts have felt a bit rushed because of this.

My plan is to jump back into writing the best content I can but I could do with some help. I need something to write about!

I have lots of little ideas in the back of my head but most of them are about my new lifestyle outside of the normal 9–5. As I have only been doing this for nearly three months I don’t feel I am ready to comment yet as I am still finding my feet. There are some other things that I want to write about but I need to do a little research first and I haven’t had time for anything like that yet.